Residents of Steep Rock, Manitoba, are being treated to a bizarre sight along the popular limestone cliffs.
When local entrepreneur Peter Hofbauer went down to the Lake Manitoba waterfront on Saturday to see if he could still kayak, he found a cobblestone-like surface he’d never seen before, Hofbauer told Global News on Monday.
There were thousands of ice spheres frozen together, ranging in size from golf balls to soccer balls — for as far as he could see.
It’s a rare phenomenon that happens when frazil ice — or ice crystals — forms in turbulent, slightly sub-zero water, river ice expert and Stantec hydrotechnical specialist Dr. Vincent McFarlane said. The frazil accumulates and rises up to the water surface, he told Global News on Monday.
The strong winds and waves this past weekend likely rolled it up into slushy orbs that eventually froze, McFarlane said.
“The wave action took these frazil ice accumulations and rolled them up into ball shapes, instead of letting them form … the pans or the pancakes that we would see on the river,” McFarlane said. “We would have a three-dimensional sort of rubbing of all these accumulations against each other.”
“It’s something I’ve heard of a couple times before. I know it’s been seen on the Great Lakes (on occasion),” he said. “I think with the strong winds and big waves, we sort of saw something that was really unique in this scenario.”
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